


A Queer Beginning

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Arthur Conan Doyle Canon References, Book: A Study in Scarlet, But mostly fluff, F/F, Femslash, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, Mrs. Hudson's backstory, Pre-Slash, everyone's going to figure it out are you kidding me i don't do tragedy, extra soft lesbianism, the boys are pre-slash, the girls have already got it done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: Sherlock Holmes, smitten with his new flatmate, comes to Mrs. Hudson for advice.





	A Queer Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marta/gifts).



> Happy Holmestice, Marta! You mentioned a preference for rarepairs and femslash, and wanted a gapfiller for A Study in Scarlet. Combining those, I chose Doyle's later, apparently misplaced, reference to a Mrs. Turner at 221B, and made Mrs. Hudson a wife. Thanks for your brilliant prompts!

Adelie and I keep a good house. Our rooms are rarely left without tenants. But we were still on our own a fortnight after the kerfuffle with the forgers. They couldn’t deny it; we’d found their set-up in the second bedroom. It had seemed a pity—they were a well-mannered pair, and prompt with the rent. Still, we couldn't very well keep them on. So there we were, set back on our heels.

But our luck turned with the year, and brought us Mr. Holmes, and Doctor Watson. Adelie showed them around upstairs, and said she liked them. That was enough for me--she had an eye for people. (I had signed the lease to the forgers.) They moved in bag and baggage immediately. Mr. Holmes came downstairs the next morning, and popped his head into the kitchen, while Ade was still poking up the fire.

"Breakfast isn't ready," I protested. He shrugged.

"I won't take any. I'm going down to the hospital. Make sure he eats, though, will you?" He gestured broadly toward the stillness upstairs. "He didn't sleep well."

"Shall I take something up later, then?" I was struck by his tone: he sounded like a man troubled for a friend, not for a stranger he'd just taken rooms with the day before.

"Yes, do. Tell him to eat my breakfast, too, and make it up to you for my ingratitude," he smiled, and took himself off.

I soon learned that Dr. Watson was rarely seen downstairs; he had been injured amid the fighting in the Orient, and was only half-recovered. I knew this because I saw Mr. Holmes in my kitchen every week, at all hours, and every time for the Doctor. Might I order some soft rolls from the baker, to tempt the Doctor's appetite? Might I send up an extra comforter for the Doctor's bed? The chill was paining his bad leg. Did I have some mustard, and would I make up a poultice for the Doctor's chest? He’d caught cold again, coming home in the rain.

"He likes him," Ade told me.

"Well, I can see that." She was combing out her hair by the fire, and I wanted to watch, and not speak, but she was smiling saucily.

"No, Martha, he likes him. Truly."

"Not as much as I like you," I told her, which put an end to talking.

But I began to notice it. Mr. Holmes helping the Doctor patiently down the stairs, a gentle hand under his arm--playing away on his fiddle of an evening when I came to collect the dishes, making eyes at the Doctor over top of the instrument—laughing with him in the hall, back late from something secretive involving his inspector friend, both as pleased with themselves as I'd seen them yet. It meant something, it did.

I had accounts to settle, and I’d just put out my candle that night when I heard him on the stairs. He looked a little embarrassed when he put his head in the door, but more worried.

"Watson's having nightmares," he said. "Is there any way to stop that? I hate to wake him."

"No way I know of," I said. He was still too thin, despite my good dinners. "Sit down. The coals are still hot. I can have peppermint tea ready in five minutes, and you can give it to him if he wakes himself. Peppermint does soothe the nerves."

"Oh, yes," Mr. Holmes said, but didn't move.

Our chamber door opened. Ade with her hair in two braids put her head out, squinting. "What's wrong?"

"The Doctor's having nightmares," I told her. "I'm making tea. Go back to sleep--I'll be in soon."

I put the kettle on. Mr. Holmes took two long steps into the room, at last, and settled on a chair the wrong way round, resting his pointed chin on the back of it.

Softly, he asked, "How did you and Mrs. Turner come to your arrangement?"

I looked at him, his weary young face, and I thought to myself that what is simplest is hardest to explain. How could I tell it?

* * *

When I was nineteen years old, a hunted fox ran through our garden with the dogs in pursuit, screaming, and startled the mule my father was grooming. The mule kicked out, and struck my father's leg. He dragged himself back to the house on hand and knee; collapsed on the doorstep, faint from the pain.

His hip was broken into so many pieces it was soft to the touch. The doctor said he wouldn't walk again.

My father had used to hire himself out with the mule and our cart, and my mother had taken in washing. We had nothing set aside to get by on--not without my father's strength.

While my father lay abed, drinking to dull his pain, my mother took pen and wrote to her cousin in Surrey. He was head ostler to a great house there; and he knew of a place in want of a girl like me. So I was sent, a little country girl, to Guildford in Surrey to earn my keep.

There were three scullery maids at the house that took me, and two ladies' maids, and a cook, all of them older than I. At first I thought they would none of them like me, they talked so fast amongst themselves, and never looked my way. But I kept my head down and my mouth shut and watched to learn the way of the house.

I slept in the kitchen, on the bench by the hearth, till the maid whose place I took would have her things out. The cook brought me hot coffee the next morning, and looked surprised that I thanked her. I began to hope that I might win her over, at the least.

That evening I was sent upstairs. I was to share a little garret room with the maid called Adelie. "So you are staying," she began. It seemed uncertain whether she approved of this, but, "Good," she said; smiled at me, a broad and beautiful smile, and my heart bounded up. I was wanted.

From the beginning I was fascinated by her. She was quick, sure-handed and steady-eyed, she made everyone laugh, she read beneath the staircase when the housekeeper was out, she was never still: she kept a piece of wood and a carving knife in her apron, and worked away whenever she sat; when she had to stand and wait she danced--the smallest sway of her hips and little flutters of her fingers, moved by whatever melody was in her head. The day wages were paid out she bought pages of poetry, and sausages, and apples, and we'd sit by the fire and roast the food and read, trying not to burn our fingers. She taught me to braid my hair like hers, and where to buy lavender and rosewater to smell like her. In the evenings she lit a white candle before a picture of a beautiful lady, and murmured prayers in French and Latin. I adored her.

After a little while, the boys and men began to pay me mind. It surprised me. I had never gone with anyone. I told Ade I didn't know what to do with them, and she told me, solemnly, never to go out with one who hadn’t blushed or stammered asking for me--"If they seem too sure they may not like you enough." And she said never to believe the ones who promised me everything from the first day.

"How do you know?" I demanded. We were sitting on her bed, she tucked up behind me, taking down my braids; in the candlelight she was soft and lovely. "You never walk out with anyone."

She laughed at me. “I have done. But I don’t find men nice to kiss. Do you?”

“I like to be kissed,” I said, which was more speculative than sure: it had happened just once and the idea had been pleasanter than the result."I don't know who else would do it."

“I could kiss you, instead,” was her answer, which hushed me up. “I like you better than they do.”

She laid her head down between my shoulder-blades, and waited, while her arms went around my waist. When I didn’t speak, she sighed and went back to running her hands through my braids, loosening them slowly.

“I would like that,” I said, finally, having made my way through the idea and finding nothing against it. “I think. Show me.”

She kissed me: let my hair fall down, and kissed my cheek, and my lips. When I was warmed she laid me down on the bed, and kissed me more, holding me against her neck. It was heaven. She held me, and loved me, and murmured to me, till gaining courage I kissed her back.

“There, now,” she said, “isn’t that better?” It was. It was almost too much better--the next morning, when we had gone below to start the fires and the morning’s mending, I couldn’t help looking at her every minute, and I am sure I blushed. She was the best thing I’d ever seen.

I don’t know what I’d have done if she had had enough of me then. I went fretting and flustered to our room that night, but when she came out from the washroom and straight to me, holding out her arms, I forgot to be afraid. I was wanted.

“I can’t stop watching you,” I told her, when finally we lay wrapped up together beneath the coverlet, our heads on one pillow, sharing each other’s warm breaths in the dark. “I think--” I was shy, but she was already laughing, so I finished, “I think you are perfect.”

“Oh, I hope not,” she laughed, “no room for improvement, how dull!” and then, “Do you love me, then?”

I did. I knew it as soon as she said it, but I couldn’t speak, only took her hand and kissed it, and kissed it, till she pulled me up against her and held me close.

I would like to say I began to be a woman, then, but I did not: there were no consequences to me loving her: nothing changed: no one knew. We were very discreet, very well-behaved; and if she held me all night we looked the same in the morning. We made no plans--we only meant to be happy.

But stand still as we might the world still moved around us, and one day I had a letter from my mother. My father had had an apoplectic fit, felled by the drinking and the pain, and could not be woken. They thought he was dying.

"Mother needs me," I said. "She can't manage alone. She sounds so sad--I have to go."

Ade held me while I cried, and trembled, for anger or for grief.

"Come with me," I pled, which earned me a terrible laugh.

"You mean they would welcome a little French girl, a Catholic, to stay in your bed at night, and look at you like I love you? Is it that kind of village? Or am I meant to pretend that I am something else?"

"No," I said, "no," and wished I could tell her she was wrong. But she was not wrong. They would hurt her. I couldn't let them.

"Go home," she said, and kissed my forehead, a blessing on everything sick and wrong ahead.

On the train I found she had packed me apples and sausages and a white candle.

I might say that in time I didn't think of her, but only because the thought of her had settled unmoving inside me, a warmth at my heart. I missed her: it was true and also pointless. I had not written to her. I had been sorry, and a little ashamed, but what was there to say? My father had died, my mother had rallied, and we had taken stock of what remained to us: one poor house, two large hogs, a flock of good laying hens; a garden, but no money to plant it--everything had gone to the doctors. I'd thought wistfully of Surrey, of searching for a place for us both in some tradesman's kitchen, but my mother would not give up the house. Instead we began to take in travelers. I could cook, and she could wash--what else was needed?

So ten years on, I was an innkeeper. We had a few travelers every day, and a few townsmen for supper every night, which was enough to keep me in bread. The world moved on, but I did not: I worked. I kept a place for tired strangers to find a little comfort, and paid a country girl to help me serve the tables—paid her well enough that she could send pennies home, as I had done years ago. I took some pride in that.

The girl came into the kitchen as I was portioning out the cider, on a good cold night in April, and said, "There's a Mrs. Turner here asking for you, ma'am."

I stepped into the doorway of the dining hall, thinking nothing. What I saw I could not understand. My Adelie was standing in the middle of the room.

"Oh, Martha," she said, at sight of me, sounding exactly like herself. It gave me such a turn, I had to brace myself on the doorframe, for the beating of my heart.

"You--Mrs. Turner?" I found breath to ask. "Ade? You are--"

"I am," she said, and laughed. I knew that laugh. I could have sank to my knees for it, but that every lodger eating had stopped to watch me watching her. I must have looked as though I had seen a ghost.

"Come back to the parlour," I said to the not-ghost. "Come with me."

I took her coat, heavy and warm; lit the lamps, and gave her a chair by the fire. I have said that she was the same, but by the light of the hearth I could see new laughter-lines around her lovely eyes.

"This is all yours?" she said, looking about her, still smiling. "You’ve done so well."

"It's small," I said, and then, collecting myself, "I have done well. I did my best."

"You did what you came here for." And then, at my look, "You've provided for your mother. You must have done--she couldn't want for more."

"No, she didn't," I agreed.

"She isn't here?" A strange tone in her voice, half regret, half hope.

"My mother is gone." I wanted something to do with my hands; I got up to pour tea. "The girl said you were called Mrs. Turner."

"Yes. And she told me you were Mrs. Hudson now."

"I am," I said, and then, in response to a tug at my heart, "but widowed, not wedded. Mr. Hudson was a godsend. He helped us build the house up, and he was good to me. He let me be as I am. But he died when my mother did, in '31. The influenza came here. I did write to you once, before he and I—but no one at the old house knew where you’d gone."

"I'm sorry," was all she said, but now there was so much feeling in her look I couldn't bear it.

"Where is Mr. Turner? Back in Surrey?" It was a bitter question in my mouth. I hadn't seen her in ten years, I had no claim to her, and still--

"No, in Paris. He's with his partner, Mr. Roswell--he's opened a new shop there. I won't see them above twice a year. No, don't look like that." I imagine my expression was peculiar: I couldn't think who would leave her behind, and yet hadn't I? "No, Martha, it's all right. I planned it with him. Remember? I don't like kissing men."

"I know," I said, breathless, and she laughed.

"But my husband does. Actually, he likes kissing Mr. Roswell, mostly. He's given me my independence, and his house and his name; I've traded him the cover of mine. He has his freedom now, and I have a chance, my dear."

I gave up on the tea, and sat down, caught in the sound of her voice, the astonishing thing she was saying. "Tell me," I whispered.

"I mean I might take a partner of my own. I mean I could support you now--I mean--Martha, you know I couldn't have forgotten, I've never not wished for you--"

She was stammering and blushing over me. I was still wanted.

I burst into tears, and she came to me, and held my face, and kissed me well.

* * *

"I came here for her," I said. Mr. Holmes' face shone with interest. He loved a story; loved to understand, I think, more than anything. I was beginning to comprehend him. "I sold my family home, and came here with nothing but her promises."

"Why?"

"She told me the truth. She wanted me."

"That was enough?"

"It's enough when the time is right," I told him, and got up to take the kettle off. "It's enough when there's love in it. Take this upstairs, Mr. Holmes. If you can't stop his dreaming, still you’ll be there when he wakes."

"I will be," he agreed, already turning to go. But he stopped at the door and added, "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. And my apologies to Mrs. Turner, for keeping you away."

I liked the look of the smile in the corner of his mouth. "Good night, Mr. Holmes."

"Good night, Mrs. Hudson."

**Author's Note:**

> Notes from canon: Watson mentions in their first meeting that he’s still unwell, and wakes often at night. He also says he can’t go out in bad weather yet. He could be prone to colds since his health is fragile, or have trouble keeping his footing on a wet street with his cane; or else storms and chilly temps increase his exhaustion and pain. 
> 
> He also says Holmes is much steadier in his sleeping and waking habits (in bed by ten, and up early) than we know him to be later. So unless he developed pining-related insomnia, I assume he was being careful for Watson’s sake at the start—either resting enough to be able to help Watson if he was needed or convincing Watson he was sleeping more than was fact.
> 
> About the ladies’ romance: if I've understood my reading aright, queer relationships tended to be more uncomplicated among working-class people in the 19th century. Women's relationships were never illegal, though sometimes scandalous—girls’ schools sometimes had policies in place against “excessive expressions of affection” and servants and teachers could be let go or relocated for “seducing” other women. But others saw affairs between women as essentially innocent, absent men's supposedly more passionate influence. For more on queer relationships in Victorian England see Graham Robb's fantastic history Strangers, Elizabeth Mavor's The Ladies of Llangollen, Anne Lister's diaries and biographies, and Edward Carpenter's My Days and Dreams.
> 
> This was great fun to do. Thank you, Holmestice mods and writers!


End file.
